Colony Size and Individual Fitness in the Social Spider Anelosimus eximius

1998 ◽  
Vol 152 (3) ◽  
pp. 403 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aviles ◽  
Tufino
2006 ◽  
Vol 274 (1607) ◽  
pp. 231-237 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jes Johannesen ◽  
Yael Lubin ◽  
Deborah R Smith ◽  
Trine Bilde ◽  
Jutta M Schneider

Social, cooperative breeding behaviour is rare in spiders and generally characterized by inbreeding, skewed sex ratios and high rates of colony turnover, processes that when combined may reduce genetic variation and lower individual fitness quickly. On these grounds, social spider species have been suggested to be unstable in evolutionary time, and hence sociality a rare phenomenon in spiders. Based on a partial molecular phylogeny of the genus Stegodyphus , we address the hypothesis that social spiders in this genus are evolutionary transient. We estimate the age of the three social species, test whether they represent an ancestral or derived state and assess diversification relative to subsocial congeners. Intraspecific sequence divergence was high in all of the social species, lending no support for the idea that they are young, transient species. The age of the social lineages, constant lineage branching and the likelihood that social species are independently derived suggest that either the social species are ‘caught in sociality’ or they have evolved into cryptic species.


1998 ◽  
Vol 152 (3) ◽  
pp. 403-418 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leticia Avilés ◽  
Paul Tufiño

1993 ◽  
Vol 41 (5) ◽  
pp. 441 ◽  
Author(s):  
MF Downes

A two-year study of the social spider Badumna candida at Townsville, Queensland, provided information on colony size and changes over time, maturation synchrony, temperature effects on development, sex ratio, dispersal, colony foundation, fecundity and oviposition. Key findings were that B. candida outbred, had an iteroparous egg-production cycle between March and October, had an even primary sex ratio and achieved maturation synchrony by retarding the development of males, which matured faster than females at constant temperature. There was no overlap of generations, the cohort of young from a nest founded by a solitary female in summer dispersing the following summer as subadults (females) or subadults and adults (males). These findings confirm the status of B. candida as a periodic-social spider (an annual outbreeder), in contrast to the few known permanent-social spider species whose generations overlap. Cannibalism, normally rare in social spiders, rose to 48% when spiders were reared at a high temperature. This may be evidence that volatile recognition pheromones suppress predatory instincts in social spiders.


Genes ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 137 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shenglin Liu ◽  
Anne Aagaard ◽  
Jesper Bechsgaard ◽  
Trine Bilde

Variation in DNA methylation patterns among genes, individuals, and populations appears to be highly variable among taxa, but our understanding of the functional significance of this variation is still incomplete. We here present the first whole genome bisulfite sequencing of a chelicerate species, the social spider Stegodyphus dumicola. We show that DNA methylation occurs mainly in CpG context and is concentrated in genes. This is a pattern also documented in other invertebrates. We present RNA sequence data to investigate the role of DNA methylation in gene regulation and show that, within individuals, methylated genes are more expressed than genes that are not methylated and that methylated genes are more stably expressed across individuals than unmethylated genes. Although no causal association is shown, this lends support for the implication of DNA CpG methylation in regulating gene expression in invertebrates. Differential DNA methylation between populations showed a small but significant correlation with differential gene expression. This is consistent with a possible role of DNA methylation in local adaptation. Based on indirect inference of the presence and pattern of DNA methylation in chelicerate species whose genomes have been sequenced, we performed a comparative phylogenetic analysis. We found strong evidence for exon DNA methylation in the horseshoe crab Limulus polyphemus and in all spider and scorpion species, while most Parasitiformes and Acariformes species seem to have lost DNA methylation.


2007 ◽  
Vol 35 (1) ◽  
pp. 143-152 ◽  
Author(s):  
T. Alex Perkins ◽  
Susan E. Riechert ◽  
Thomas C. Jones
Keyword(s):  

1999 ◽  
Vol 58 (3) ◽  
pp. 677-688 ◽  
Author(s):  
M.E.A. Whitehouse ◽  
Y. Lubin
Keyword(s):  

2015 ◽  
Vol 282 (1813) ◽  
pp. 20151167 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vérane Berger ◽  
Jean-François Lemaître ◽  
Dominique Allainé ◽  
Jean-Michel Gaillard ◽  
Aurélie Cohas

Evidence that the social environment at critical stages of life-history shapes individual trajectories is accumulating. Previous studies have identified either current or delayed effects of social environments on fitness components, but no study has yet analysed fitness consequences of social environments at different life stages simultaneously. To fill the gap, we use an extensive dataset collected during a 24-year intensive monitoring of a population of Alpine marmots ( Marmota marmota ), a long-lived social rodent. We test whether the number of helpers in early life and over the dominance tenure length has an impact on litter size at weaning, juvenile survival, longevity and lifetime reproductive success (LRS) of dominant females. Dominant females, who were born into a group containing many helpers and experiencing a high number of accumulated helpers over dominance tenure length showed an increased LRS through an increased longevity. We provide evidence that in a wild vertebrate, both early and adult social environments influence individual fitness, acting additionally and independently. These findings demonstrate that helpers have both short- and long-term effects on dominant female Alpine marmots and that the social environment at the time of birth can play a key role in shaping individual fitness in social vertebrates.


2003 ◽  
Vol 81 (10) ◽  
pp. 1763-1766 ◽  
Author(s):  
Traci Cipponeri ◽  
Paul Verrell

The social groups of many vertebrates may be characterized as "uneasy alliances" that reflect tensions between benefits of group membership and costs to individual fitness among members, especially nonrelatives. The prebreeding season may be a time when these tensions become most acute and so observable for packs of gray wolves (Canis lupus). We recorded affiliative (play) interactions among two females and five males of known social ranks in a captive pack as the time of breeding approached. Substantial inequalities among pairs of wolves were apparent in frequencies of both the initiation of play and the exhibition of positive responses by recipient wolves. With the subsequent arrival of the breeding season, the pack experienced social disruption that led to the eviction of the original alpha male and a reordering of the ranks of those wolves remaining. Our data suggest that unequal affiliative interactions among pack members can be associated with (and, perhaps, even be predictive of) subsequent social disruption at a time when opportunities for personal reproduction become most available.


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